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At 02:20 PM 12/23/02 +1100, Nick Nicholas wrote:
Bob, I think I got a gotcha with your duet. The duet has a commonality of purpose. Any two random people don't. You would claim that the mass of Paul and John wrote the Beatles songs, whether it was true that Paul actually did one on his own or not.
OK.
Now let's form a mass of Paul, John, and Henry Kissinger. That mass wrote the Beatles songs, true. But there's an excellent reason why Hank doesn't fit into this picture.
What if I said "The Beatles wrote their own songs"? Ringo and George maybe had less to do with it, but more than Hank. "The human race wrote the Beatles songs" is also true, just not particularly interesting.
Never mind your piano carrying supervisor, at least she's somehow
involved with the piano carrying. Hank isn't. How do we exclude him
from {lei finti be le selsanga}?
lei is in-mind. If I have Hank in mind and talk of le cimei poi finti le selsanga, you might well look at me funny for saying it, but it is true.
(Remember what Jordan just said: if any pamei is involved, then any remei is involved.) And pragmatics isn't enough of an answer.
Fundamentally, I think that last sentence is the key. To me, it is only pragmatics (Grice's maxim of relevance, is it called?) that determines who can be included in a mass. And the answer will differ for different purposes.
lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@hidden.email Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org